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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 7189659" data-attributes="member: 6787650">Speaking from a game design/DMing standpoint, I'm not a fan of the Barbarian. It's an almost entirely front-loaded class. Levels 6-19 of the Barbarian might as well not even exist--they are dominated by other classes. The most effective Barbarians are Barbarian/Rogues, Barbarian/Warlocks, and Barbarian/Bladesingers.But. They work perfectly well as a "simple" class option, for players who don't want a lot of mechanical complexity. You can certainly have fun playing a barbarian. It's just that in an edition where most classes are chock-full of features at every level, it offends my design sense to see a class with so many virtually-dead levels: if you thought the Champion's Improved Critical was a waste, just look at the Barbarian's Brutal Critical, which wastes three times as many levels to virtually no benefit! Or compare Relentless Rage with the Death Monk's Mastery of Death: the Barbarian's version is unreliable (can fail), has more preconditions (must be raging), doesn't protect against insta-kill, and is usable only 20% or so as often. Persistent Rage at 15th level removes an annoying feature of Rage, a limitation that e.g. Bladesingers never had in the first place, and that's all you get at 15th level. Between 1st and 20th levels, even the Rage bonus damage only increases by a meager +2! Even in an absolute best case scenario where a Barbarian is getting two attacks, a reaction attack, and a bonus action attack every round, that's still only +8 to damage if all of those attacks hit. You'll barely notice the difference; and you'd be better off as a Barbarian 5/Swashbuckler 15, with +8d6 (28) to damage instead of only +8, not to mention Evasion and Uncanny Dodge. (The Barbarian capstone gives another +2 to hit and +8 to damage, which isn't terrible, and sort of makes up for the lack of Swashbuckler sneak attack damage, but at every level below Barb 20 the Swashbuckler variant is still well ahead.)The barbarian concept is fine, but they could have done so much better on the execution. For starters, double the Rage bonus damage scaling from +2 (1st level) to +4 (20th level) ==> +2 (1st) to +8 (20th). Make Relentless Rage worthwhile by capping the DC at [attack's rolled damage], so DC is [10 + 5 per use, or rolled damage, whichever is lower], so that a Barbarian can resist the slings and arrows of a goblin horde instead of falling to merely the third arrow (DC 20). I'm not sure what to do about Brutal Critical honestly, but maybe give it a rider: when you roll a critical hit, the enemy must save vs. Con or be stunned until the end of the round [or beginning of its next turn, if using PHB initiative], AND take the bonus damage. At 9th level, the DC is 8; at 13th level you get to add your proficiency bonus [DC 8 + prof]; at 17th level you get to add your Strength mod [DC 8 + Str + prof].Do that and it would no longer feel like a waste to take a Barbarian past 5th-6th level.</blockquote>

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